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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254302">Without Her</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertPersephone/pseuds/DesertPersephone'>DesertPersephone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Desperate Romantics, Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV First Person, Vampires, its just some vampire poetry really</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:42:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertPersephone/pseuds/DesertPersephone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She had died and years had passed and yet, Rossetti had stayed the same.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>or, Dante Gabriel Rossetti gets turned into a fucking vampire</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lizzie Siddal/Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lola/Samson, Original Female Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Without Her</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this like, 8? years ago and y'know what? its still pretty fucking good.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sitting in front of her grave I felt sanity slipping away until I was a sobbing mound of despair. I kept asking how this could happen, but I already knew the answers to those questions. I just didn’t want to come to terms with those answers. The cold bit into my knees, icy cold wet spots from the moss. Soon her grave too would be covered with that same mossy carpet and before long, crumbling away. Soon she would be forgotten. But there, in front of that newly tilled dirt, I vowed that I would not be forgotten. I would ensure that my name lived on, in fame or in infamy, I did not know, but I would live on and I would live on for her. In <em>her</em> memory. For her. For my Lizzie.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Rossetti.”</p>
<p>I glanced up at the voice, as a cup of coffee was set on the table before me, steam rolling off it like ghost breaths. It was Samson, always Samson, supplying me with human necessities, if not for him I’d sit in the back and they’d burn me at the stake. He had coffee for himself and tea for Lola, and I could smell the blood in the drinks. There was someone sitting at the stage, setting up a keyboard, a girl with too much makeup smeared onto her eyes.</p>
<p>“Thanks.” I said, glancing back to the girl on stage. Samson nodded, the slightest tilt of his chin, agreement, thanks, while Lola talked for him, and he sat next to her, arms linked. They were like a painting. The real Dante and Beatrice.</p>
<p>“Why did you bring me here?” I asked bringing the cup to my lips, the coffee cooling with my breath. “So I could wallow in myself pity some more?” I set the cup down and reached within my coat pocket.</p>
<p>“Please.” Lola said, tapping off her cigarette ash. “It’s not as if you need us to wallow, you can manage fine by yourself.” Lola watched as I brought a flashing silver flask out, tipping it into my drink. Samson held his hand out for the flask.</p>
<p>“Locked up, away in that old flat,” she continued, inhaling again as amber liquid mingled with the coffee and blood in Samson’s cup. “It’s a wonder you can even come out in the day at all.” I shrugged in response, tucking the flask into my coat pocket. She went on, poetry more than words, the most poetry I’d heard in nearly one hundred and sixty-six years. More poetry then this painted woman on stage spoke. If I were someone else, I wouldn’t have slept with her, but I was myself still, even after the years.</p>
<p>“Don’t.” Lola warned. “She’ll write bad poetry about you afterwards.” Lola was right, but then at least someone would have been writing something about me. The girl on stage had begun her show, mounding irregularly on her keyboard and moaning into her microphone, heartbreakingly bad lyrics that hardly passed for anything but <em>poetry</em> in this age.</p>
<p>“Rossetti always liked the ones willing to pledge themselves to him.” Samson murmured eyes flicking between the shadows before fixing on me. His eyes were like a flickering blue fire, burning with each lifetime he’d lived. I smiled back to him and drank from the coffee again. It had gone cold.</p>
<p>“I went to see her the other night.” I said finally, as the girl on the stage continued with her poetry. Both of my companions turned, slowly and thoughtfully towards me, and part of me was quite aware that I should have kept that secret, but all I wanted, all I’d ever wanted, was to talk. To tell people how much of an idiot I was. They shared a look and Lola excused herself, climbing from our hiding place with her hair floating like a cape behind her, humans watching, entranced by every hair.</p>
<p>“And how was that?” Samson asked, bringing his coffee to his lips, looking forward, away from my unceasing mistakes and me. “Was she the same as you remember? Still covered in moss and granite?” I looked forward as well, to the irregular pounding on the keyboard. The girl was still moaning about lost love, and I smugly thought of my own lost love.</p>
<p>“She was the same,” I said. “Larger than I remember, but then, it’s been a very long time since I was in London.” Samson nodded and set his cup down. He was older than I by plenty of years, and when we’d met I’d foolishly thought that I could teach him things. He remains to this moment my teacher, mentor, among others.</p>
<p>“We never really leave London.” Samson said and he rested his hand on the table with his palm up. Faded blue lines, like veins, covered the pale skin, the distant shadow of an old tattoo, something about coming home and about the sea; newer scars raised again the flesh like mountains on a map. I thought of a few lines that would describe that hand perfectly, symbols of hate and robe burn, but I ignored those thoughts and looked at his face again. He was already looking at me, with dead eyes and an alertness that surprised even me. After so many year I would have easily thought he would be vacant and empty, like I, but he was more alive then he’d ever seemed.</p>
<p>“Why did you go back?” He asked and I shrugged. Why had I gone back?</p>
<p>“After 150 years I think I just wanted to see her. I haven’t seen her since the night they…”</p>
<p>“I know.”</p>
<p>“I just wanted to see her.”</p>
<p>“And how did that go?” He asked turning to me, eyes flicking across my face, the fold of his brow suddenly angry, his grip on the coffee mug before him tightening so the ceramic cracked. “How was it, Rossetti, seeing your dead wife? Did it instill in you a passion unquenchable by any amount of bad poetry? Are you renewed?” Samson turned away from me and I glanced down. I knew his anger well; I like to think that I was the one who had shortened his temper. He had told me, the night I was made, that I was a sin upon the Garden, that my old life might be appealing but that it would only mean more pain. He had warned me, and I thought that after a lifetime I was strong enough, but my heart was still bleeding. I’ve always thought I was stronger than I am.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“I warned you.” He shook his head and took a drink from his coffee cup. I shrugged. Maybe my time was finally up, maybe I would die for eternity this time. “Where will you go?”</p>
<p>“Back home.” I said standing. “For a time, until my heart bleeds itself dry.” I could see Lola, patiently waiting by the stage, tall and lean and finely made, a piece of china, painted with a permanent smirk.</p>
<p>“I’ll call sometime next week.” Samson said, keeping his eyes straight ahead, watching that same girl on the stage. “Lola will take your goats if I find you gone.” I nodded.</p>
<p>“I’ll let the maid know.”</p>
<p>It was raining when I stepped outside, and I turned the collar of my coat up, against the gale. How this modern age has changed us, with our high collars and sleek black shoes, it’s almost as if time has stood still while I moved on, wondering ages and streets. I would walk forever, into oblivion and chaos, if I could. And I can. I will walk and I will continue, even if my sister’s name outlives mine, and my art decays and my skin falls into a fleshy mound before my feet. The street was all dark, with gleaming streets and flickering lights, humans passing like insignificant smudges in the dark. A charcoal sketch of life, a smear of what they consider art now, with a red pulsing heart in the middle, red paint smeared by, a walking torch.</p>
<p>The woman walked by me with no pause or hesitation, that pulse in the night, tossing that hair so it was illuminated in the street, bright against the rain. I could not help myself; I stared. She was the muse I’d searched for. I might turn my body to ash, and my talent to cinders in hope of restarting the fire, or I might hog those cinders to myself and float on the hot air in my chest. I turned and followed her, down the street, my blood dust and weeds. I would not sink, not again, not ever. I will remain, for you Elizabeth Siddal.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So yes, Lola and Samson are the final form of two vampire characters I created in middle school, and they still slap</p></blockquote></div></div>
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